


in a restless world like this is

by goingaftercacciato



Category: The Halcyon (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Introspection, Light Angst, M/M, Missing Scene, Some Mentions of Period-Typical Homophobia, and thinking about his newfound feelings for adil, author suffers from chronic overwriting disease and poor proofreading ability, but not really because nothing bad actually happens, but nothing severe, just toby being filled with anxiety as per usual, starts just before the opening scene in episode 6 and goes on from there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:48:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26425906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goingaftercacciato/pseuds/goingaftercacciato
Summary: Seventy-four dead in Paddington. That’s what the grey-voiced man on the wireless had said. Seventy-four dead. Killed in a flash, with a bang. Interred beneath shallow concrete and squandered prayers, no hope of escape. A shelter turned slaughterhouse.
Relationships: Toby Hamilton/Adil Joshi
Comments: 12
Kudos: 17





	in a restless world like this is

**Author's Note:**

> Back by whatever the opposite of popular demand is, it's me again. Testing the waters with another missing scene fic. Just wanted to do a bit of little introspection with Toby and how he would be feeling while waiting for Adil to show up in episode 6.
> 
> Title comes from Doris Day's "When I Fall In Love."

Toby’s knuckles are nearly as white as the porcelain sink they cling to as he tries to remember how to breathe properly. Easier said than done.

Seventy-four dead in Paddington. That’s what the grey-voiced man on the wireless had said. Seventy-four dead. Killed in a flash, with a bang. Interred beneath shallow concrete and squandered prayers, no hope of escape. A shelter turned slaughterhouse.

His stomach lurches, and he reaches for the tap. Lets the icy water run over, through his trembling fingers. Splashes it on his face. Shuts it off. Blinks at himself in the mirror. 

He feels so utterly _useless_. Waiting around to find out whether or not his heart is still beating. Or if it’s been buried, suffocated in cold ash. 

It can’t be. Surely, Adil is walking through the rubble, not a part of it. On his way to work with not a single scratch on him, not a perfect hair out of place. He isn’t among those unfortunate seventy-four. He can’t be. He simply can’t. It couldn’t have happened to him.

But if Toby’s learned anything from this war, from the past month of ambiguous terror night in and night out, it’s that it could happen to anyone. Age, class, gender, race: the bombs don’t discriminate, they don’t make exceptions, they don’t take mercy.

The muffled stomp of carpet-dampened footsteps rises up outside his door, and Toby goes rigid. He listens, frozen in unbearable anticipation, as the steps trample right past his room and fade away down the hallway. He sighs in relief, in heavy anguish.

He can’t be sure how long he’s spent hunched over the sink, trying to keep his stomach down, but the morning must be growing late; he can hear the hotel coming to life above, beneath, and around him. He’s meant to be in the Royal Suite by half-past nine to take breakfast with his mother—she’s warmed a few degrees since the stifling shadow of his father has been cleanly swept away, and she now insists upon having his company every morning that he can spare it—but Toby can’t entertain a single thought about dressing himself and putting on a convincing smile for his mother while he’s still caught in the grasp of this restless, adumbrative agony. 

He can’t bear the notion of even stepping outside the protective walls of his room, this sanctuary where he has found himself and seen his happiness grow despite the Hell and highwater around him; because if he were to venture out, reality would seize upon him, for better or for worse, and any plausible deniability would be lost. The odds are split evenly down the middle, fifty-fifty, and he knows the numbers too well, has studied them too closely, to stock any trust in those chances. No, he’d rather stay in his blissfully ignorant bubble for eternity than gamble with the possibility of entering into a world without Adil Joshi in it.

It may have only been a month and a handful of days since that morning in early September—when the breeze was sharpening its teeth and Toby stepped fully out of his fretful fear for the first time in his life—but even so, Adil has already well and truly seeped into the fabric of Toby’s life. Not a day has gone by that they haven’t contrived, by various clever means, to find themselves alone together for at the very least a precious few minutes, no matter how busy or dismal those days were.

And those small, cornered moments they catch together, they are the best of Toby’s days. Perhaps even of his life thus far. Adil is everything he’s never allowed himself to dream of. He’s the only one Toby wants to tell everything to, the only one he wants to hear everything from, the only one with whom Toby doesn’t have to lie or temper himself into something small and subdued. Adil is quiet and peace and comfort in the midst of the growing disaster around them. He’s a miracle that Toby’s not quite sure he deserves to be blessed with but that he accepts with selfish, needy gratitude all the same. He’s a generous, glowing hearth by which Toby warms himself and to which Toby happily feeds the best pieces of himself in return. Toby is not prepared to live without him, but he very well may have to.

And what of Adil’s family? Has word reached them in Bristol? Are his parents as wracked with fear as he is, trembling and numb as if from the cold? Is his older sister holding up a brave face, carrying on as normal until her children run off to school? Is his little brother walking to work with a knot in his throat, wondering if there will be an empty chair this year at Diwali, one less set of hands passing around the mithai? They must be, if they’ve heard, if they’ve put the pieces together; though, he sincerely hopes they haven’t. Toby knows how they had begged Adil to leave London when the Blitz began, pleaded with him to come back to them, where the money and jobs were thin but at least the bombs did not fall every night.

Adil has always spoken of his family—the cheeky but good-hearted Dhani, the bold and brilliant Nisha, his endlessly warm and devoted parents—with tremendous fondness and a proud smile. He adores them, would give anything for them and has—having severed his schooling to provide what little extra income he could for them, elbowing his way up through dirty backend pubs all the way up to The Halcyon’s gilded prestige. The Joshi’s are a proper family. A proper family that isn’t only together for dinner, silent and spread impersonally down the table even then. A proper family that speaks without barbs, without trying to dig and bruise. A proper family that knows how to support and encourage and love. And as such, Adil’s family means the world and more to him, and Toby’s sure the reverse is true. Though at the moment his own pain seems immense and intolerable, he cannot even begin to fathom the immeasurable sorrow that will overcome Adil's family if Adil is--

Toby rips viciously at the dreary thoughts, tears them to shreds, and shoves them away, out of sight. He’s never been much of an optimist, but he has to be now. He can’t stand to consider the alternative.

He dries his hands mechanically and steps out of the bathroom. The bright light barging in through the wispy curtains jumps on him immediately and mocks him with its overbearing indifference. Eyes narrowed, he approaches the window on hesitant feet and twitches the curtain aside. The birds twitter beyond the glass, flitting between the trees, their wings weightless with a lack of despair as they merrily whistle their bucolic songs. Below, the street bustles with the sounds of hardened citizens getting on with their lives, immune to the grief-black pillars of smoke that cut into the sky and the still-smouldering ruins they rise from. Only the smoggy clouds show an ounce of respect for his turmoil as they have considerately smudged the sun down to a dull white blemish.

He watches the charade of normalcy scurry on below him for a moment, jealous and nauseated, then breaks away to pace the length of the suite. He's been reduced to nothing more than an agitated coil of desperate, aimless energy, biting at his lip and twisting the heavy ring on his finger. Fear is a familiar beast to Toby Hamilton. As he grew up, it was never far behind him, he was never without it. And over the years, as he changed and learned, it did, too. It shifted and stretched; it matured and mutilated itself into whatever would cut him best; it lurked always just out of sight but close enough to smooth its slick, shivering fingers across the nape of his neck and drip down his spine whenever it pleased.

But this? This is a fear he has not yet had the misfortune of meeting. It is maniacal, onerous, starving, feeding perpetually on itself like a demented serpent swallowing its own tail. It’s vivid, inescapable in the same way Toby imagines being run through with a long sword must be, and it has sliced efficiently down his throat, deep into his heart to be pumped through every last inch of his body.

All he can do is wait.

And wait. And wait.

Until--

The knock at the door is restrained, polite. Two taps Toby might have missed if every fibre in his body wasn’t acutely aware of his scratchy, still surroundings. He nearly falls over himself in his haste to reach the door. _Please_ , he begs no one in particular, _please please please._

To see Adil standing there on his doorstep, beautiful and whole and _alive alive alive_ : the wave of relief that crashes through Toby could have toppled a mountain.

“Oh, thank God.”

He grabs Adil’s shoulder, twists his needy impatient fingers in his pristine jacket, and pulls; Adil follows him eagerly. It’s all Toby can do to close the door before he’s pressing himself against Adil, kissing him as if it’s been months since they last saw each other instead of hours. Adil’s hands slip around his waist, and feeling, rosy and sharp, rushes back into Toby’s petrified body, prying it into life once more.

He fights the need for air as long as he can, caught up in the whirlwind wonder of Adil’s lips on his, still dizzying only a month in, but eventually, he has to pull back. His lungs heave, and his heart goes on in its jackrabbit skitter as he closes his eyes and presses his forehead against Adil’s, breathing in the quiet scent of his aftershave. He could stay there forever.

 _This must be what it feels like_ , he thinks to himself, _to be in love._

The thought doesn’t scare him. He would have thought it would, but...it doesn’t. Just like everything about being with Adil, it fits; it sinks through his mind, easy as can be, a foregone conclusion, a budding blessing. Of course he loves Adil. How could he not? The world can argue what it likes, condemn him and call him vile and hate him to the ends of the earth, but loving Adil, it’s as innate as the colour of his eyes, as effortless as the blood moving through his veins; it’s a natural process of his heart. There is no other state in which he could possibly be. And he refuses to feel any shame for it, for something that has brought him such beauty and healing.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Adil asks, his voice torn between concern and confusion, his fingers bunched tightly in the fabric of Toby’s dressing gown.

Toby sighs, the residual anxiety only just starting to leak, slowly, from his body. He finds Adil’s hand, tugs him properly into the room. “You live near Paddington,” he answers simply because he doesn’t know what else he could say.

“Yes?”

Toby stops and looks back to Adil, letting his hand drop as Adil moves around to stand in front of him. How could he not know? How could Toby possibly explain to him the Hell he has endured this morning? The uncertain torment that has practically flayed him down to the bone?

“Bomb dropped on a shelter and killed everyone inside it.”

Just saying the words aloud, panic grips Toby anew. Images, horrid, gruesome images cut into his head, dragging a lurid string of what-ifs along behind them. It could have been Adil; it easily could have been Adil down there in the cold; it still could be Adil. How many more mornings will he wake up in fear, wondering if Adil has made it through the night? How many more mornings will he spend sick to his stomach, waiting for a knock that might never come? How many more mornings will he have to pack away his frantic emotions and pretend he isn’t falling apart because this potent, consuming love that he feels can never be shown?

Before Toby can send himself any further down the spiral, Adil smiles, shakes his head with something of a chuckle and gently takes him by the lapels. Toby reaches out in turn, his hands falling against Adil’s chest.

“I’m all right,” he says, soft and sure. Toby’s hands slip down to his arms, holding on as Adil turns him, a shadow of a waltz. “See? I’m fine.”

His lovely, deep eyes wait for Toby’s, but Toby can’t bring himself to meet them. Instead, he closes his eyes, his forehead against Adil’s, and lets the warmth of Adil’s skin, the steady weight of his body, the subtle thud of his pulse against the palm of Toby’s hand, convince him that it really is all right.

“You were that worried about me, huh?”

Toby’s eyes slide open; this close, he can see the cheeky smile being poorly smothered beneath Adil’s seemingly innocent curiosity.

“Oh, shut up,” Toby whispers, fighting back his own grin as Adil’s breaks free. “You have _no_ idea.”

 _Or does he?_ Toby wonders idly. Does he know that Toby is in love with him? That he has taken a hold of Toby’s heart, so swiftly, so fully, in a way Toby had never thought possible? That Toby is entirely his: mind, body, and soul? He must, he must know; Toby can feel it pouring out of himself, uncontrollable, covering him from head to toe in flowering delight.

_Does he love me, too?_

Their lips meet once more, lingering and hungry and honey-sweet, and Toby has his answer.


End file.
